


Isolation Tank

by falafelfiction



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emo Mike Wheeler, Gen, Good Sibling Nancy Wheeler, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 18:29:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12917703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falafelfiction/pseuds/falafelfiction
Summary: Mike is sent to his room after graffiting the bathroom stalls. It's not any lonelier than any other night spent in the Wheeler house - for Mike or for the rest of his family. Missing scene fic set between S1 and S2.





	Isolation Tank

**Author's Note:**

> So along with not getting enough Mike/El in S2, I felt like we didn't get enough of the Wheeler family interacting. I know a lot of fans have been wanting more brother/sister bonding scenes between Mike and Nancy (I do too) but I also want more of Ted and especially Karen. I'm kind of fascinated by this picture perfect nuclear family who are slowly having separate breakdowns in different corners of their lovely suburban home. So that's what I'm exploring in his oneshot.

Mike lay on his mattress, one leg raised and kicking at the struts of the top bunk above him. He’d been sprawled on his bed like this since he’d got home from detention. His parents had confiscated his Atari again and he wasn’t allowed down to the basement to play with the rest of his toys. He hadn’t been invited to the dinner table either. Since his teachers had called his parents to tell them _what he’d done this time_ , his mom had just told him he was to go to his room for the night and stay there.

There was a knock at his door. Nancy slipped inside, leaning back against the wall and crossing her arms.

“Graffiting the bathroom stalls?” she said with a raised eyebrow. “Really?”

He shrugged. “Everybody does it.”

“I never did. Is it true what you wrote?” Nancy lowered her voice and mouthed “ _Our government is lying to us?_ ”

“They are lying to us,” he shot back. “You know that.”

“Mike, there's literally nothing you could’ve written that'd freak them out more. And did you have to write it today of all days?”

He rolled his eyes. It was the fourth of July and Mike just couldn't stomach sitting through the special flag-waving baton twirling assembly that Hawkins Middle had held in the gym. The same gym where secret government agents had come hunting for Mike and his friends. So Mike had bunked off the assembly and hidden in the boy’s bathroom, scrawling his thought of the day in permanent marker on the stall door. That was until Mr Kowalski had found him there and marched him to the principal’s office.

“You remember our parents think you were harboring a dangerous Russian spy in our basement?” said Nancy. “They’re going to think you’re some kind of commie sympathizer. _Mike_ , are you listening to me? You can’t keep lashing out. You need to start being smart about this.”

“You be smart,” said Mike, propping himself up on an elbow and turning to face her. “You pretend like nothing happened and go on as normal. You’re good at that.”

Nancy's cheeks flushed with rage. “You think that this is easy for me?” she hissed back, narrowing her eyes to a glare. “You think that I’m not messed up over everything that happened last fall? Well fuck you, Mike! Your friend came back from that hellhole. Mine didn’t!”

He held her stare, his eyes just as fierce.

“ _One_ of my friends came back...”

Mike couldn’t keep his voice from cracking as he spoke those words. And suddenly the anger drained from his big sister’s face. She was looking at him with concern now. She let her arms drop, crossed the room and sat down on the edge of his mattress.

“You really did like her, didn’t you?” she said softly.

Mike didn’t answer, but his silence was a confession of its own.

“Hey, no more secrets!” she persisted. “We promised each other, remember? We said we’d tell each other everything from now on,” Nancy knitted her fingers together, knowing neither of them had kept that promise. “You think I don’t know exactly how you’re feeling? How it feels to lose someone, but not have any closure? I mean…we can’t even have _funerals_ for them.”

He tensed. “El’s not dead,” he muttered.

Nancy winced at him. “Mike…”

“She’s still out there. I know it. I...I can feel it.”

His sister bit down on her lip and nodded.

“I don't blame you for feeling that way. I just don't think it's good for you.”

The door creaked then, startling them both. Steve Harrington poked his head inside.

“Hey Nance…” he said, his nose crinkled up. “Are you coming downstairs again soon? Because it’s super awkward being left alone to make dinner conversation with your parents. Besides, we’re not supposed to be talking to your delinquent little brother, right? He’s been sent up to his room in disgrace.”

“Shut up Steve,” said Mike.

“Hey!” said Steve, raising a finger. “I’m a guest in your house, dipshit. I think your mom raised you to have better manners. Right Nance?”

Steve looked to Nancy for support. Mike was surprised to see his sister’s eyes pinched with irritation. Her stare was saying _‘Shut up Steve’_ too. Mike realized in that moment that Nancy didn’t really have much respect for her boyfriend, despite how cool and popular he was supposed to be. He bet she really liked Jonathan more but she couldn't admit it for whatever vain stupid reason.

“Go back to the table, Steve,” she said evenly. "I'll be there in a minute."

Steve’s eyes darted between the Wheeler siblings. He blew air out of his cheeks, threw up his hands and headed downstairs.

Nancy turned her attention back to Mike. “Mom’s really upset, you know,” she told him. “She can’t focus on anything that we’re saying to her over dinner. She’s all tense and distracted. Her lasagna is hard in the middle and everyone’s just pretending not to notice.”

He swallowed. “What about dad?”

"Dad?" She shrugged. “He’s just being dad...”

Nancy rose from his bed and headed for the landing. Before leaving, she gave him a hard stare. “Get a hold of yourself, Mike. You can’t keep pulling shit like this and you can’t be writing those things on bathroom stalls. We’re all patriots in this house, remember?”

Nancy flashed him a bitter smile, then closed the door. Mike lay back and resumed kicking the underside of his top bunk. He lay like that for a long time, waiting for his mom to come up and see him. In the Wheeler house, being sent to your room without dinner didn’t really mean you were going to be left to go hungry. It just meant that Mike would have to wait till everyone else had eaten and the table had been cleared. Then his mom would microwave his portion and bring the plate to his door. She’d expect an apology in exchange for the food and a promise from him to never vandalize school property again. She’d probably remind Mike for the hundredth time that she was here for him, that he could talk to her.

Mike lay waiting for his mom, but his mom didn’t come. Around 8pm he heard her putting Holly to bed but she soon headed downstairs again. It looked like she was really going to let him starve this time. It looked like Nancy was right and he’d really upset her. The clock rolled around to 9pm, to 10pm and still nothing. Mike shut off his light and tried fall asleep but the ache of his empty stomach kept him restless. Nancy had gone out to see a movie with Steve so he couldn’t even recruit her to smuggle a snack up to him.

Mike pressed an ear to his door, then opened it a crack. The landing was silent and desolate. He decided to chance sneaking downstairs. He crept into the kitchen to find it empty and unguarded but also, a shocking mess. The dishes hadn't been loaded into the machine. Plates, cutlery and leftovers smattered the surfaces. The window was wide open and flies were buzzing over the last piece of lasagna left in the oven dish. There was an empty wine bottle sitting by the sink and an empty glass beside it with a lipstick mark on its rim.

Beyond the clutter in the kitchen, Mike could see his dad asleep in the lazy boy. He could hear his old man snoring above the static buzz of the TV. Mike stared at his dad in the living room, his mind flashing back to the morning he’d got El to sit in that chair and pull its lever so the cushions flipped back. It was the first time he’d seen her smile.

Mike’s dad didn’t smile when he slept. He didn’t look sad either. His face was blank and motionless as it ever was in the daytime. It never looked like his dad was dreaming. He just seemed dead to the world, another piece of stuffy old furniture in their house. The grey light of the TV pixels glowed on the sagging skin of his face, giving him a ghostly mask. Mike remembered when they'd first got their big TV, a few years back. It used to be that they'd sit in front of it together and watch warm fuzzy family sitcoms like 'Happy Days'. Shows where fathers actually talked to their kids, like Mike’s dad never did. Not even the TV set could bring the Wheeler family together anymore. They each preferred to be shut off in their own separate rooms, little locks on every one of their doors.

Mike turned his back on the living room and he focused on raiding the fridge. Instinctively he pulled open the freezer draw and took out a box of Eggos. He slipped two of them into the toaster and once they were heated through, he stood at the counter, cramming them into his mouth. He felt his eyes brimming with tears and he swiped a hand furiously across his face. This was _not_ going to be another one of those nights when he cried over eating waffles. It wasn’t.

As he swallowed his last mouthful, Mike heard a strange noise coming from the basement. A groaning sound like a wounded animal. He crept down the steps to find the lights were on down in his hangout. There was a pile of laundry on the floor beside the tumble drier, some of it neatly folded, but most of it lying in heaps. On the coffee table there was another open bottle of wine with another empty glass beside it. Then there was another moan. It was coming from the bathroom behind him.

Mike tentatively pushed open its door. He found his mom slumped on the floor, her knees buckled under her and her head sagging over the toilet bowl. She was dressed in her bathrobe with her hair piled up on top of her head, though many strands had fallen forwards and were sticking to her pale clammy skin. The toilet water in front of her had turned dark red, so red that Mike would've thought his mom had been throwing up blood...if the bathroom hadn't smelt so strongly of wine.

“Mom?” His voice was already trembling as he crouched beside her, pressing a hand to her shoulder. “Mom, are you okay?”

His mom’s chest gave a little heave. She pressed a hand to her lips and gently pushed him away.

“I'm fine, Michael,” she rasped. “Just a touch of flu. Stay back, I don't want you to catch it. I’m not having you miss anymore school.”

Mike winced. He lied to his mom all the time, but it still stung when she did to him. It’s not like he hadn’t noticed that she was having extra glasses of wine with dinner these days. Sometimes a glass in the afternoon too. But he’d never seen her drunk like this. With a sinking feeling, Mike realized he must've driven her to it.

He also realized he hadn’t apologized to her yet.

“I’m sorry,” he said, reaching for her again. “I didn’t mean to upset you. That’s not why I wrote that message in the stalls.”

Suddenly his mom reached back. She clasped hold of his wrist, her long nails needling his skin.

“I don’t trust them either, Mike," she whispered. "They give me the _creeps_.”

He frowned. “What? Who don’t you trust?”

“ _Shush_!” She tightened her grip. “They might be listening...”

His mom looked around fearfully at the bare walls and light fixtures. That was when Mike realized who it was she didn’t trust. Their government who was lying to them. Their government who had filled their house with bugs and who could be listening to them even now.

“But mom,” said Mike, lowering his voice to a whisper too. “What about all your campaigning? What about all those calls you've been making to help Reagan and Bush win the election?”

“Mike, we...we have to show were _cooperating_ ,” she said, tears sliding down her cheeks now. “Those people…those people told us that if we didn't cooperate then we would be putting ourselves in danger...” She shook her head, like she was trying to shake off some terrible imagining that was still lodged there. "Why do you keep putting us in danger, Michael? That Russian girl…what did she _do_ to you?”

His mom was squeezing his wrist hard now. She didn’t seem to realize she was hurting him. Mike was about to pry her fingers away when suddenly she released him. His mom's chest heaved once again as she vomited another red mouthful into the toilet basin. Mike staggered to his feet and looked away. He shuffled over to the sink to fill a glass with water from the tap. Will had told him about all the times that his dad had made himself sick with drinking when he'd still lived at their house. Will had said that Mrs Byers always got his dad to drink lots of water to detox the alcohol in his system and to stop him from getting a bad hangover the next day. Mike’s mom panted over the toilet a few moments longer, then she accepted the glass from Mike with a quivering hand. She let Mike tug one of her arms over his shoulder and then raise her to her feet. Then very slowly he began to help her up the stairs.

When they reached the bedroom, Mike’s mom crawled onto her mattress and curled into a ball like a moody house-cat. She looked small and lonely on the huge bed where she slept alone almost every night as Mike’s dad slept in his favorite chair downstairs. Since she was laying on top of the duvet, Mike put a blanket over her. He tried to get her to drink more water, but she just waved him away. She reached for the box of tissues on her bedside table and wiped the mascara trails from her cheeks. Then she put on her bedtime eye mask before laying back down on the pillows. With the blindfold it seemed like his mom couldn't stand to look at Mike any longer...or else she couldn’t bear the way he was looking at her.

Mike wasn’t sure how long he stood there staring at his mom. Suddenly he was startled by Holly crying out in the next room. He expected his mom to stir, but it seemed like the wine had really knocked her out. So Mike gently closed her door and went to Holly himself. He found his baby sister sitting up in bed, gripping her blankets in both fists, her little face streaming with snot and tears. She looked confused when Mike and not mom sat down on her bed. So confused that she forgot to keep crying.

“M-Mike?” she whimpered, her sobs slowing.

“Yeah...yeah, it’s me. Did you have a bad dream, Holly?”

She nodded rapidly. “I want Mommy...”

“Mom's not feeling good just now. But I'm here.”

Holly frowned at him again, puzzled by this arrangement.

“You got in trouble,” she said. “You been bad.”

It wasn't a question. Mike just sighed. “Yeah, I have.”

She stuck out her tiny finger and poked it against his cheek.

“Bad Mike,” Holly told him.

“Bad Mike,” he agreed.

Then Holly threw her arms around his neck and nestled her snotty little face against his shoulder. Mike guessed this was all the telling off he was going to get from her. He cuddled Holly back, rocking her gently in his arms. It was at times like this when his baby sister was Mike’s favorite member of the Wheeler family. He wished that things could be this simple with his parents. He wished that they could just scold him, then forgive him and then hug him as quickly as Holly could. After a few minutes, Mike felt his little sister go limp in his hold. He lowered her back onto her bed. Holly had her thumb lodged in her mouth now. His parents wanted her to get out of the habit of sucking it but Mike left the thumb where it was. It looked like she needed it.

Mike was about ready for bed himself. He was just stepping into the bathroom to pee when he found himself staring at a tub filled to the brim with water, bubbles frothing onto the floor and about a dozen scented candles becoming puddles of wax on the tiles. He hurried over to turn off the taps and blow out the dying flames. Mike realized that his mom must have run this bubble bath for herself earlier that evening and then forgotten all about it. Sure enough, another glass of wine was sitting on top of a romance novel on the cabinet.

Mike picked up the wine. He sniffed it, then took a sip. He had never actually tasted wine before. He'd once shared a bottle of beer with Lucas that they'd swiped from a cooler at the Sinclair’s barbecue when nobody was looking. But Mike had never even wanted to try wine before. Remembering the smell from the basement bathroom, the taste made him sick to his stomach. But he drank the rest of the glass anyway, forcing it down like it was medicine, if only so he could get a sense of why his mom seemed to need it so much.

A little dizzier than before, Mike sank to his knees on the wet floor. He reached into the bath for the plug so that he could let the water go. Then he stopped himself. He remembered how Mr Clarke had always taught him it was bad to waste water. How they should all try to save the planet by not letting taps run, by switching lights off, conserving energy and resources. Then another thought came to Mike. His mom’s baths were always full of salts. Those therapeutic salts that she bought from the health store. Impulsively, Mike took the open jar and poured the rest of the crystals into the lukewarm water. He knew it wouldn't be enough and he’d need Dustin here to calculate the exact right amount. But he could still give it a try. Mike stripped down to his vest and underwear. He coiled up a towel from the handrail and used it to blindfold his eyes. He pawed the air until he felt the tub’s rim. Then he stepped into the bath. He heard its water spill over the edges as he let himself lay back. The bath water was deep, but he had to grip the handles at the sides of the tub to make himself float. He supposed that would have to do. The salts still helped in the way that they numbed and relaxed his limbs. Mike let the bubbly brine fill up his ears, cutting off his sense of sound as well as sight.

He breathed deep in the noiseless darkness. He tried to find her. Well, not _find_ her exactly. Just feel her again. Mike didn’t have superpowers of his own. He couldn’t do the things that El could do. But he had this idea that if he was in the bath, focusing his mind entirely on her, then she'd have an easier time of finding him. El had found him before. Mike was sure of it. There had been nights when he’d felt her reaching to him through his dreams and he’d woken up breathless, expecting to see her leaning over his bed. He didn’t even have to be sleeping to feel her presence. Last month he’d flunked a math test because the entire time he couldn’t shake the feeling that El had been standing right beside his desk and the only thing Mike had written on his paper was _‘Are you there? Please let me know if you’re there?!'_ over and over. _  
_

No psychic visions were coming to Mike in his own homemade isolation tank. But the feeling was coming back to him now. That feeling that El was reaching for him still. Like a spirit out of limbo trying to make contact with the living. But Mike had to believe she was more than a ghost. He had to. _Yes_ , he could feel El now. He couldn’t see her, but he could feel her and she felt so close. He could feel her strangeness, her longing, her pain. He couldn’t hear, but he could feel her voice calling to him. Calling his name out of the darkness.

_Mike…Mike…_

“Oh my God, _Mike_!”

The feeling was wrenched away as a hand gripped Mike’s vest and hauled him up from the water. Another hand ripped the towel off his eyes. He blinked and wheezed. Nancy was kneeling beside the bathtub, her eyes wide with panic.

“You idiot!” she hissed. “Why are you messing around with sensory deprivation on your own? You could’ve drowned yourself! What the hell were you thinking?!”

Mike sat shivering in the water, still woozy and disorientated. He couldn’t explain what he was doing to his sister without sounding crazy. Nancy was _already_ looking at him like he was crazy. She pressed her palms to her face in frustration. If her night at the movies with Steve had helped take her mind off Barbara and everything else, then it looked like Mike had just ruined it for her. But Nancy didn’t yell at him. After all, she didn’t want to wake the rest of the family up. She rose wearily to her feet and brought Mike a towel.

“Get dry,” she said, stiffly. “Go to bed.”

He nodded and let the bath water go. He numbly dried and dressed himself in the shadows. By midnight Mike was back in his room, staring up at the struts of the top bunk again. His room felt like an isolation tank of its own, just like every other room in the Wheeler house, where every member of his family was floating in their own personal darkness.

Mike swallowed as he remembered his promise to El that she could be a part of his family. How he’d promised her his mom’s cooking, TV shows on his dad’s lazy boy and Nancy being her big sister, giving her the best advice. Mike had really believed it. He'd believed his family could save her. He'd thought his home could be her lifeboat.

He hadn’t seen till now how all of them were drowning.

 

 


End file.
